Will Solar Power Outshine Oil in the Near Future?

[zoobyshoe]

But the problem with solar+powerwall economics is that it is backwards. The whole point of conventional energy storage is to generate energy and store it when you otherwise could only sell it cheaply because you don't need it (at night) and resell it for more money when you do need it (during the day). Or to avoid building a new power plant. Storing solar takes that and flips it over, buying high and selling low by storing energy that could be sold at its most expensive and using it or selling it at a time when the energy is cheap anyway. It's a huge money loser, not a winner.

Russ, you didn't respond to my response to this. You see now that your reasoning here is incorrect, right? The solar storage is to extend use into times when the sun is not usable but the electricity demand is still high and the cost still high.

 

[mfb]

Still, the popcorn growers make money!

Yes, because making popcorn is cheap. Making hydrogen from solar power is not. You propose to construct a machine for $10,000 that can produce a single serving of popcorn per year. Even without any maintenance cost, how can you expect this to be profitable, no matter how you sell this popcorn?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, because making popcorn is cheap. Making hydrogen from solar power is not. You propose to construct a machine for $10,000 that can produce a single serving of popcorn per year. Even without any maintenance cost, how can you expect this to be profitable, no matter how you sell this popcorn?

And this is the only objection that matters: can you produce hydrogen for less than the utility will buy it for? They're only willing to pay so much, can you produce it for less?

Your $10,000.00 serving is a gross exaggeration, but, according to what Gleem posted, the cost of solar produced H2 is two to three times more than comparable natural gas. At the current time with what's available, it wouldn't work.

 

[mfb]

And this is the only objection that matters

It is not the only one, it just the most obvious one.

If you can make more money by selling the electricity instead of fuel, where is the point in adding fuel production that increases your cost and reduces your sales?
If buying electricity is cheaper than setting up solar panels, where is the point in solar panels?

 

[Davy_Crockett]

Solar panels on residential rooftops is the worst way to utilize solar panels...workers will go to a new site every few days, deal with different roof slopes, gutters, dogs, fences, and on and on... for more deaths/injuries..

Falling off roofs is terrible. There is a whole industry of roofers though. Everyone with a roof needs to get it re-done every 20 years. It might as well get replaced with Solar tiles.

https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/solarroof

 

[rootone]

In my local town the traffic lights and similar have been updated to mostly utilize solar power when available.
Seems like a forward step.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If you can make more money by selling the electricity instead of fuel, where is the point in adding fuel production that increases your cost and reduces your sales?

Said this twice already: I'm not talking about adding hydrogen production to an existing solar electric farm. I'm talking about a dedicated hydrogen farm, which means you don't have more equipment, you have different equipment. Your cost is not increased, and you're not reducing your own sales.

If buying electricity is cheaper than setting up solar panels, where is the point in solar panels?

If it is not now feasible to make a profit making and selling storable hydrogen, you get to work figuring how to bring the cost down. That has been done about 4 billion times in the history of manufacturing: a thing that was once too expensive to profit from later became profitable. When I first saw a digital watch in the 1970's the guy who had it had paid over $200.00 (1970's dollars) for it. Now you can get one at the dollar store. The more you do anything the more you figure out how to do it cheaper.

One of the dazzling things about this new battery array is how fast they put in in. The article says that's because they had worked out the major bugs on several other smaller installations around the world in the past few years.

 

[mfb]

Said this twice already: I'm not talking about adding hydrogen production to an existing solar electric farm. I'm talking about a dedicated hydrogen farm, which means you don't have more equipment, you have different equipment. Your cost is not increased, and you're not reducing your own sales.

A dedicated solar to hydrogen farm costs much more than a dedicated solar to electricity farm (at comparable size). And chances are good a dedicated hydrogen farm would use electricity as intermediate product anyway.
You are avoiding a comparison, but if you actually have to invest money that is the comparison you would make. How much money do I get out for money I have to put in, and is there something that leads to more money at the same investment costs?

That has been done about 4 billion times in the history of manufacturing: a thing that was once too expensive to profit from later became profitable.

Some products get cheaper, but that doesn't mean everything gets arbitrarily cheap just because you want to.

 

[mheslep]

getting serious about storage, and they are going to plow ahead and go with batteries.

Getting serious with utility class storage (TWhrs) using batteries is an oxymoron. SD&E may be collecting more revenue from customers.

 

[mheslep]

...Europe has a roughly stable amount of woods in most places.

Germany, annual electricity generation from biomass (TWh):
2002: 4
2006: 15
2010: 32
2014: 45

2016: 47

Using 875 kWh electric per dry ton, and 40 dry tons per acre: roughly 53 million tons of dry wood per year, 1.3 million acres (5e3 km²) harvested per year.

IIRC, the above has driven up the price of timber in Germany so as to create a thriving black market in wood imported from harvests on protected land in Eastern Europe.

Elsewhere in Europe, wood is imported from the west:

All very 18th century. Soon to come: whale oil power.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Very interesting article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...lar-energy-from-1-of-the-sahara/#461d925ed440

 

[NTL2009]

Very interesting article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...lar-energy-from-1-of-the-sahara/#461d925ed440

Interesting? Those sorts of articles make me (and should make you) MAD!

That kind of headline leads non-technical people to think "Oh, we don't have an energy problem, there's plenty of green energy for all of us! We consumers don't need to do anything, just let the engineers get busy collecting sunshine to make my computer go. I 'll go back to watching cute kitten videos on youtube. Problem solved".

I'll leave it to you to pick the article apart. Find independent sources for their numbers on solar energy per m^2 at the equator, and panel efficiencies (which degrade as temperature increases), and last I heard it is HOT in the desert, and a black solar panel will get very, very hot! See if the numbers make sense.

Wow, a little optimistic on costs? They say "The total costs currently run about ninety cents to a dollar per Watt installed. In this proposal we have assumed the realistic thirty cents per Watt. "

Thirty cents/watt INSTALLED is realistic? I've never heard such a low number ever. Show me. Panel costs may still be on a downward curve, but inverters are not on such a steep curve, and certainly metal frames and labor and copper wire are not.

And I didn't see more than a hand wave at the little detail that the sun sets in the evening. Storage costs anyone (ignore that Inconvenient Fact behind the curtain)? Or that not very many people live in the desert. How about the cost of getting that power to the people? They just hand-wave that away too, turn it to hydrogen and pipe it to people. As if that is free and lossless.

Really, you need to take a critical eye towards these claims.

 

[mfb]

See Desertec. They had more realistic cost estimates, however.

That means 1.2% of the Sahara desert is sufficient to cover all of the energy needs of the world in solar energy.

Technically correct - but only during the day, not as 24 hour average.

There is no way coal, oil, wind, geothermal or nuclear can compete with this.

Filling 1% of the Sahara with nuclear reactors, coal or oil power plants would give even more power. Sounds ridiculous? Exactly.

And so on. The article is horrible.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Interesting? Those sorts of articles make me (and should make you) MAD!

That kind of headline leads non-technical people to think "Oh, we don't have an energy problem, there's plenty of green energy for all of us! We consumers don't need to do anything, just let the engineers get busy collecting sunshine to make my computer go. I 'll go back to watching cute kitten videos on youtube. Problem solved".

I'll leave it to you to pick the article apart. Find independent sources for their numbers on solar energy per m^2 at the equator, and panel efficiencies (which degrade as temperature increases), and last I heard it is HOT in the desert, and a black solar panel will get very, very hot! See if the numbers make sense.

Wow, a little optimistic on costs? They say "The total costs currently run about ninety cents to a dollar per Watt installed. In this proposal we have assumed the realistic thirty cents per Watt. "

Thirty cents/watt INSTALLED is realistic? I've never heard such a low number ever. Show me. Panel costs may still be on a downward curve, but inverters are not on such a steep curve, and certainly metal frames and labor and copper wire are not.

And I didn't see more than a hand wave at the little detail that the sun sets in the evening. Storage costs anyone (ignore that Inconvenient Fact behind the curtain)? Or that not very many people live in the desert. How about the cost of getting that power to the people? They just hand-wave that away too, turn it to hydrogen and pipe it to people. As if that is free and lossless.

Really, you need to take a critical eye towards these claims.

Well, I think what's needed is to see the Sahara idea as something like a gedanken fiction to make some points. The 1.2% of the Sahara Desert example gives a vivid picture of just how much solar energy if hitting the Earth and how little of it we would need to collect for our purposes. The Sahara hydrogen farm is a fictional gathering into one place of what would, in fact, be many of them spread out all over the world, located anywhere in a comparable insolation zone. It's like saying, "If you took all the X's in the world and laid them end to end, you could circle the Earth so many times."

His cost per watt installed was based on the idea of whoever was building this vast installation manufacturing their own panels rather than buying them from a third party. I thought that was a good idea that would apply to anyone doing a huge installation. And on the fact there would be no inverters because you'd be using DC right out of the panels to split water. He does, however, completely neglect the fact you then need electrolysers.

I agree that the issue of transport is a problem he didn't deal with realistically at all. A hydrogen pipeline "grid" is definitely going to be more expensive than what you have for natural gas.

_____________________________________

The more I look into this the more I see that people are going to have to squarely face the fact that we have been living like spendthrifts off a compact hoard of energy that took millions of years to come into being. The future is going to be a contraction back from that. Hydrogen can't compete with the treasure chest of millions of years of stored natural gas. When the natural gas runs out, in 90 years or so, the replacement is going to be at least twice as expensive.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Getting serious with utility class storage (TWhrs) using batteries is an oxymoron. SD&E may be collecting more revenue from customers.

When you say "utility class storage," you mean what? The figure you gave earlier: enough to run the utility for three months?

 

[mfb]

The 1.2% of the Sahara Desert example gives a vivid picture of just how much solar energy if hitting the Earth and how little of it we would need to collect for our purposes.

0.00000000004% of the total luminosity of the sun. Add a few zeros to compare it to the luminosity of the galaxy.
30 tons of sea water per day could satisfy the energy demand of the world via fusion. A single truck every day. A cubic kilometer of sea water could satisfy current demand for 35 million years.

It is easy to find numbers that look small if you compare them to something large (like the whole Sahara or the Sun). Installing solar power on an area equivalent to 1% of the Sahara would be a huge project, no matter if you actually use the Sahara or other areas.

His cost per watt installed was based on the idea of whoever was building this vast installation manufacturing their own panels rather than buying them from a third party.

That doesn't make cost go down by a factor 3 magically.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Installing solar power on an area equivalent to 1% of the Sahara would be a huge project, no matter if you actually use the Sahara or other areas.

We have already done the equivalent in the form of the grid as it exists now. That took over 100 years. If we have 90 years of natural gas left, it would probably be a good idea to get going and not leave a change over till the last minute.

That doesn't make cost go down by a factor 3 magically.

If it makes the cost go down enough to have been worth the effort, then it's the right way to be thinking about this.

Personally, seeing that wind is ahead of solar in electrical production, I don't think solar is ever going to be the dominant "renewable." It's what the thread's about, though.

 

[mfb]

We have already done the equivalent in the form of the grid as it exists now.

The existing grids transmit a much smaller power. Total power consumption is much larger than total electricity consumption.

Solar panels won't run for 100 years, solar panels that are supposed to work in 2117 cannot be installed today. And at least currently solar panels are more expensive than nuclear power, for example.

If it makes the cost go down enough to have been worth the effort, then it's the right way to be thinking about this.

Why do you expect costs to go down at all?

 

[mheslep]

The future is going to be a contraction back from that

Nuclear fission. Plenty of fuel of hundreds of years, perhaps a couple thousand. No contraction.

 

[mheslep]

When you say "utility class storage," you mean what? The figure you gave earlier: enough to run the utility for three months?

Say, 12 GWh, 1 GW power, sufficient to replace a power plant over night. A pumped storage plant can be 30 GWh, 3 GW.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Nuclear fission. Plenty of fuel of hundreds of years, perhaps a couple thousand. No contraction.

Russ told me (different time, different thread) that we had about 50 years of known or 'reasonably assumed to exist' nuclear fuel left at current rates of usage and current means of usage. "Means of usage," is the important concept here because If, but only if, all nuclear plants converted to breeder reactors, that figure could be extended by a fantastic 100x. 5000 years.

I'll buy your "hundreds of years, perhaps a couple thousand," years, though, because, if we had breeder reactors, a lot more would be brought online and nuclear would replace fossil, so the "current rate" would increase.

The problem is that no one is doing this. Only very small, proof-of-concept breeder reactors have ever been built, and there is some sort of blockage or something to getting one built and online, like, people are afraid of any proposed large change to what is currently in place. (And by "people," I mean pro-nuke people.)

Once the fuel is run through a conventional reactor, again according to Russ, it becomes unsuitable for use in a breeder reactor. It gets turned into nuclear waste, which is a burden and liability. There are some who hope they will some day discover a way to reuse this waste, but the barriers to that seem to be physics barriers, not engineering ones.

So, in the meantime, we are committing grotesque waste by continuing to use the finite nuclear fuel that exists on Earth for cheap immediate gratification, when, with forbearance and patience, we could wait until such time as we have the facilities to get the full, two orders of magnitude greater, use out of it. The spendthrift waste of nuclear fuel is actually much worse than the waste of fossil.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Say, 12 GWh, 1 GW power, sufficient to replace a power plant over night. A pumped storage plant can be 30 GWh, 3 GW.

So, it looks like you mean 12 hours of running from storage.

The entity, "SDG&E" consists of ten power generating plants of various kinds whose total output capabilities is 3100 MW.

https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/newsroom/factsheets/SDG&E%20Electric%20Generation%20Fact%20Sheet_2.pdf

3100 x 12hours would be 37,200MWh.

So far they have installed a 7.5MW, 30MWh battery bank in El Cajon, A 30MW, 120MWh facility in Escondido, and the next one will be an 83.5MW, 334MWh. All the batteries store only 4 hours of usable power, it seems.

Add up the MWh: 30+120+334 = 384MWh.

37,200MWh - 384MWh = 36,816MWh. We are very far from your goal, yes.

I did some more calculating. If each increase of 334MWh's of storage (83.5MW @ 4 hours) means a percent increase of .6% of your electric bill, then, to run the whole SDG&E 3100MW off batteries for 4 hours would require a 22.27% increase in people's electric bills from where they were before any batteries were installed. 12 hours, therefore, would be 3 times more, a 66.81% increase, and 24 hours of running off storage would be double that, a 133.62% increase.

If I haven't screwed up the math somewhere, that would not be psychologically unbearable if spread out over enough time. (But many might say, with good reason, "speak for yourself!" Because my electric bill is very low. Last month I paid $18.16 for electricity.)

 

[zoobyshoe]

The existing grids transmit a much smaller power. Total power consumption is much larger than total electricity consumption.

I don't understand what this means. I was responding to your comment that the Sahara project was huge. I meant to point out that, if there were no grid right now, no power plants, no fracking, etc proposing that we build such an energy distribution system from scratch could easily be dismissed as 'too huge a project to take seriously.'

Solar panels won't run for 100 years, solar panels that are supposed to work in 2117 cannot be installed today.

The grid is being constantly maintained, replaced as needed bit by bit, and enlarged. Not one month ago they just spent three days replacing a utility pole outside my house. One pole: it was a huge undertaking; they had several large trucks, an enormous crane, about 20 guys. They shut down the street for a block in both directions. I wish I could find out the cost of replacing that one pole, because I bet it was much more than anyone suspects.

Everything has a certain usable life span, yes. We are already dealing with that. It's not a problem unique to solar farms.

Why do you expect costs to go down at all?

Obviously, if you buy from someone else, there's a markup so they can make a profit. If you manufacture something for your own use, there's no markup.

 

[mfb]

Russ told me (different time, different thread) that we had about 50 years of known or 'reasonably assumed to exist' nuclear fuel left at current rates of usage and current means of usage.

And the current price. As discussed earlier, an increase in price would be no problem, and it would extend the range a lot.
Breeder reactors would be looked into more seriously if there would be a shortage of uranium. There is not.

So, in the meantime, we are committing grotesque waste by continuing to use the finite nuclear fuel that exists on Earth for cheap immediate gratification, when, with forbearance and patience, we could wait until such time as we have the facilities to get the full, two orders of magnitude greater, use out of it.

You don't have to wait for anything. You can store nuclear waste, and if you decide you want to use it more in the future you can build a breeder reactor and feed the interesting part of the waste into it.
You can also use accelerator-driven systems, they can use the transuranic elements as well.

I don't understand what this means.

The current electricity grids globally handle about 2 TW, the current electricity consumption.
The project discussed would have 14 TW, the current total energy consumption (including heating, vehicles, ...). It would need a much larger grid than we currently have.
Of course you could build such a grid (well, multiple grids actually). You could also build so much solar power. But the costs would be ridiculous.

Obviously, if you buy from someone else, there's a markup so they can make a profit. If you manufacture something for your own use, there's no markup.

Instead of two companies, you now have a larger company. A larger company wants to make larger profit (to keep the same ratio of profit/company size). Nothing changes.

 

[mheslep]

So, it looks like you mean 12 hours of running from storage.

The entity, "SDG&E" consists of ten power generating plants of various kinds whose total output capabilities is 3100 MW.

https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/newsroom/factsheets/SDG&E%20Electric%20Generation%20Fact%20Sheet_2.pdf

3100 x 12hours would be 37,200MWh.

So far they have installed a 7.5MW, 30MWh battery bank in El Cajon, A 30MW, 120MWh facility in Escondido, and the next one will be an 83.5MW, 334MWh. All the batteries store only 4 hours of usable power, it seems.

Add up the MWh: 30+120+334 = 384MWh.

37,200MWh - 384MWh = 36,816MWh. We are very far from your goal, yes.

I did some more calculating. If each increase of 334MWh's of storage (83.5MW @ 4 hours) means a percent increase of .6% of your electric bill, then, to run the whole SDG&E 3100MW off batteries for 4 hours would require a 22.27% increase in people's electric bills from where they were before any batteries were installed. 12 hours, therefore, would be 3 times more, a 66.81% increase, and 24 hours of running off storage would be double that, a 133.62% increase.

If I haven't screwed up the math somewhere, that would not be psychologically unbearable if spread out over enough time. (But many might say, with good reason, "speak for yourself!" Because my electric bill is very low. Last month I paid $18.16 for electricity.)

More time doesn't help. Batteries need replacement every 8 or 10 yrs.

 

[gleem]

I'll buy your "hundreds of years, perhaps a couple thousand," years, though, because, if we had breeder reactors, a lot more would be brought online and nuclear would replace fossil, so the "current rate" would increase.

It should noted that companies as TerraPower have designs in development (Generation IV) that use non fissionable to "breed and burn" fissionable materials. Thus they use depleted uranium or thorium rather than uranium 235. We have beaucoup stockpiles of depleted uranium and there is much more thorium than uranium. These reactors burn also fuel more efficiency. Fuel supply with these designs is not much of an issue.

 

[zoobyshoe]

And the current price. As discussed earlier, an increase in price would be no problem, and it would extend the range a lot. Breeder reactors would be looked into more seriously if there would be a shortage of uranium. There is not.

Some googling tells me that the higher the price of U, the more people are willing to extract it from lower grade sources. So, how much there is at any given time seems to be capped by how much they're willing to pay for it.

You don't have to wait for anything. You can store nuclear waste, and if you decide you want to use it more in the future you can build a breeder reactor and feed the interesting part of the waste into it.

Somehow I got the impression there was a physics barrier to this. Googling tells me there are actually several different ways to recover usable stuff from the waste. In principle. In practice I see there are big political obstacles due to the fact the products of waste refining can be used for bomb making: they're afraid of private sector security, of it getting diverted to rogue states and terrorists.

Also, there has been a bad history of the places that have tried this, at least in the US.

Despite over 30 years of cleanup efforts and billions of dollars having been spent at the site, the West Valley Demonstration Project property was described as "arguably Western New York's most toxic location" in 2013...

...The plant reprocessed spent reactor fuel at the site from 1966 to 1972. During this time period, the facility processed 1,983.7 kilograms (4,373 lb) of plutonium and 625.7 metric tons (1,379,000 lb) of spent uranium.[4]:10-12 Using the PUREX process, the plant was able to recover 1,926 kilograms (4,246 lb) of plutonium and 620 metric tons (1,370,000 lb) of uranium. Most of the recovered uranium was depleted or slightly enriched; only 0.9 metric tons (2,000 lb) was highly enriched.[4]:1-2

The reprocessing of fuel also resulted in the accumulation of 660,000 US gallons (2,500 m3) of high-level radioactive waste in an underground storage tank.[1][5] An additional 15 acres (0.061 km2) of the property was licensed by New York State for burial of low-level radioactive waste in 20-foot (6.1 m) deep trenches.[6] After reprocessing operations ceased in 1972, Nuclear Fuel Services continued to accept low-level radioactive waste for disposal at the site until it was discovered that contaminated water was leaking from the trenches. Nuclear Fuel Services was unable to obtain regulatory approval to remove and treat the contaminated water, and stopped accepting waste for burial in 1975. In total, approximately 2,400,000 cubic feet (68,000 m3) of low-level waste was buried at the site.[7]:44

Escalating regulation required plant modifications which were deemed uneconomic by Nuclear Fuel Services, who ceased all operations at the facility in 1976. After Nuclear Fuel Services' lease expired in 1980, the site and its accumulated waste became the responsibility of New York State.[1]

The former plant remains the only privately owned nuclear fuel reprocessing center to have ever operated in the United States.[5] Two additional private nuclear fuel reprocessing plants were constructed (one by General Electric in Morris, Illinois, and another by https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Allied_General_Nuclear_Services&action=edit&redlink=1 in Barnwell, South Carolina), but were never permitted to operate. Other reprocessing plants in the United States have been operated by the U.S. Department of Energy rather than private companies.[4]:4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Valley_Demonstration_Project

So, there always seems to be a gap between what nuclear proponents say can be done and what actually gets done. All kinds of problems seem to spring up that weren't foreseen. Take the San Onofre Nuclear plant that is up the coast a way from me:

Upgrades designed to last 20 years were made to the reactor units in 2009 and 2010; however, both reactors had to be shut down in January 2012 due to premature wear found on over 3,000 tubes in replacement steam generators that had been installed in 2010 and 2011. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently investigating the events that led to the closure. In May 2013 Senator Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the modifications had proved to be "unsafe and posed a danger to the eight million people living within 50 miles of the plant,” and she called for a criminal investigation...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Storage of nuclear waste is fraught with every conceivable problem, but the main obstacle, as far as I can see, is that there is no politician in the US who will allow a storage site in their state. It would be political suicide.

The current electricity grids globally handle about 2 TW, the current electricity consumption.
The project discussed would have 14 TW, the current total energy consumption (including heating, vehicles, ...). It would need a much larger grid than we currently have.
Of course you could build such a grid (well, multiple grids actually). You could also build so much solar power. But the costs would be ridiculous.

I went back and looked at the article and see that I misread it: it didn't register he was talking about all the worlds energy use. I thought it was just it's electricity use.

Instead of two companies, you now have a larger company. A larger company wants to make larger profit (to keep the same ratio of profit/company size). Nothing changes.

In the US public utilities are non-profit.

 

[zoobyshoe]

More time doesn't help. Batteries need replacement every 8 or 10 yrs.

Right. They aren't going to get "utility class storage" from batteries. I agree.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It should noted that companies as TerraPower have designs in development (Generation IV) that use non fissionable to "breed and burn" fissionable materials. Thus they use depleted uranium or thorium rather than uranium 235. We have beaucoup stockpiles of depleted uranium and there is much more thorium than uranium. These reactors burn also fuel more efficiency. Fuel supply with these designs is not much of an issue.

Very interesting, but still very experimental.

I read the wiki article on breeder reactors and it seems to have the same problems as alternative energy in so far as everything is experimental. People are working on it from so many different directions that no one thing gets developed enough to become solid and vetted. The Generation IV article says that the only way to actually see if it works is to build a full blown plant and put it online. Which is a pretty expensive experiment.

 

[zoobyshoe]

A few people have mentioned pumped hydro storage. I read up on that, and was impressed.

 

[mfb]

In the US public utilities are non-profit.

This is not just about the US.
With non-profit, you don't have the markup in either case, so where is the argument?

I don't know what the US is doing in West Valley, La Hague works nicely and reprocesses the spent uranium from half of Europe (and a bit from Japan).
Greenpeace makes up some nonsense about it, but that is not surprising.

 

[gleem]

In the US public utilities are non-profit

That is not true. They are publically traded on stock exchanges and are considered a conservative investments and valued for their dividends. They are however heavily regulated by the government and must obtain approval for any rate increase.

 

[NTL2009]

A few people have mentioned pumped hydro storage. I read up on that, and was impressed.

Pumped hydro does have some attractive qualities. Relatively efficient round-trip, should have a long life and low maintenance.

But... there just aren't many places that can support a good sized pump-storage facility. You need a place to put a lake nearby at a higher altitude. Gravity is a weak force, it takes a lot of mass * height to store much power. In some places, evaporation is an issue.

I think we talked about the planned SMUD installation, I forget the details, but a large, $$$ facility, and all it would do is provide a couple hours of storage to supply the late afternoon or early evening peak so they could slow down their coal plants a little earlier. IIRC, they needed to keep shoveling coal for that late day peak, but since coal plants take time to slow down, they would actually have excess coal generation for an hour or so after the peak. This was to allow them to level that out. But I think it's been scrapped.

 

[mheslep]

...use non fissionable to "breed and burn" fissionable materials. Thus they use depleted uranium

The problem with uranium based breeders is political, in that they inevitably produce plutonium for the fission power. Technically there is a good argument that breeder plutonium doesn't worsen proliferation risks, but politically plutonium is Mount Everest, a daunting climb.

In practice I see there are big political obstacles due to the fact the products of waste refining can be used for bomb making:

The phrase "can be used" is not helpful technically. Technically it would be simpler to make a weapon fissile material by starting from shoveling dirt off the side of the road in Australia.

...gap between what nuclear proponents say can be done and what actually gets done.

France has 'got it done' for years, reprocessing its own waste and that of other countries in Europe. In the US politics stopped reprocessing and permanent waste storage.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/inform...les/countries-a-f/france.aspx#ECSArticleLink8

Storage of nuclear waste is fraught with every conceivable problem,

Gas pipelines explode, coal mines collapse and burn, coal storage hills collapse and bury people, gasoline depots explode. And yet there's never been a fatality caused by commercial nuclear storage.

but the main obstacle, as far as I can see, is that there is no politician in the US who will allow a storage site in their state. It would be political suicide.

New Mexico, 1999
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

 

[OmCheeto]

...my electric bill is very low. Last month I paid $18.16 for electricity.)

Did you really only use 86 kwh last month?

My sister, who lives just north of you, asked earlier this month if a Tesla roof was a good idea.
At first I said yes, then I said no, then I said yes, then I said; "This is really complicated."

She sent me her last SDG&E bill, so I think I understand how your rates work. But probably not.

 

[nitsuj]

This is not just about the US.
With non-profit, you don't have the markup in either case, so where is the argument?

Just a note about non-profit, that is with respect to the equity in the business and not at all about trying to run a "zero margin" business. In other words a non-profit might have higher margin than a "for profit" or vice versa.

Hyperbole example, Registered Charities are non-profit organizations as well...Imagine their margin

 

[zoobyshoe]

Did you really only use 86 kwh last month?

Yes. The bill actually says 85kWh. My energy use is split between electricity and gas. The stove/oven, space heat, and water heater are all gas. Everything else: electricity. My bill as a whole more than doubles in winter months because they charge more for both gas and electricity during the winter and, in the winter, I use much more gas to heat. The 85kWh electricity bill is a 'sweet spot' kind of month, when the rates are low and the weather isn't hot enough to go into full cooling mode.

She sent me her last SDG&E bill, so I think I understand how your rates work. But probably not.

I'm getting the impression from this thread some people in some parts of the country are charged by time of day, but I'm not sure. Here we are not: a kWh costs the same no matter what time of the day you use it, EXCEPT in the case of people with electric cars. If you recharge from midnight to 6 A.M. they charge less than half the daytime costs. That's a special program you have to sign up for.

But, it looks like that's changing, and they are shifting to charging by time of day. At this point, it's voluntary: you can sign up for time of day rates if you think you'll save money that way.
https://www.sdge.com/whenergy/residential.php

I do not know how that will affect my bill, but I'm thinking not so much, being a night owl.

 

[zoobyshoe]

That is not true. They are publically traded on stock exchanges and are considered a conservative investments and valued for their dividends. They are however heavily regulated by the government and must obtain approval for any rate increase.

My mistake. I should have specified publically owned utilities.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This is not just about the US.

You're right, but I have to confess to chauvanism. I am personally unconcerned about anything that doesn't apply to the US. So, my posts are going to have that bias behind them.

With non-profit, you don't have the markup in either case, so where is the argument?

A non-profit still has to buy things from for-profit companies, like the companies that make these batteries SDG&E just bought. If it were feasible for SDG&E to manufacture it's own batteries, they'd save money because they wouldn't be marking them up to make a profit.

I don't know what the US is doing in West Valley, La Hague works nicely and reprocesses the spent uranium from half of Europe (and a bit from Japan).

OK. Sounds like a good example of it being possible not just in principle, but in practice. So far, this hasn't translated to the United States.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The phrase "can be used" is not helpful technically. Technically it would be simpler to make a weapon fissile material by starting from shoveling dirt off the side of the road in Australia.

In October 1976,[8] concern of nuclear weapons proliferation (especially after India demonstrated nuclear weapons capabilities using reprocessing technology) led President Gerald Ford to issue a Presidential directive to indefinitely suspend the commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium in the U.S. On 7 April 1977, President Jimmy Carter banned the reprocessing of commercial reactor spent nuclear fuel. The key issue driving this policy was the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation by diversion of plutonium from the civilian fuel cycle...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
I don't know why India used reprocessed products instead of road dirt, but the perception is out there that it is easier that way.

France has 'got it done' for years, reprocessing its own waste and that of other countries in Europe. In the US politics stopped reprocessing and permanent waste storage.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/inform...les/countries-a-f/france.aspx#ECSArticleLink8

Sorry to wave my hand at it, but there is some sort of blockage here in the US that has prevented it from getting done here:

In March 1999, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reversed its policy and signed a contract with a consortium of Duke Energy, COGEMA, and Stone & Webster(DCS) to design and operate a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility. Site preparation at the Savannah River Site (South Carolina) began in October 2005.[13]In 2011 the New York Times reported "...11 years after the government awarded a construction contract, the cost of the project has soared to nearly $5 billion. The vast concrete and steel structure is a half-finished hulk, and the government has yet to find a single customer, despite offers of lucrative subsidies."

Gas pipelines explode, coal mines collapse and burn, coal storage hills collapse and bury people, gasoline depots explode. And yet there's never been a fatality caused by commercial nuclear storage.

The criteria for nuclear waste storage is that you have to guarantee it isn't going to leak for some unbelievably long period of time, that it's not going to kill people now or ever. You and others excuse Fukushima as a freak, but freaks happen, and the longer the time you have to go depending on the absence of a freak, the less you can say the freak accident won't happen to some storage site somewhere. I brought up San Onofre. Despite you and Russ especially often claiming that the nuclear industry has learned its lessons and safety is now unparalleled, they, never-the-less installed some defective steam pipes. There was no accident, thank God, but they had to shut the plant down.

New Mexico, 1999
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant

A one-of-a-kind site in that the public opposition didn't end up killing it, or maybe the fact it was essentially a military disposal site (waste from nuclear weapons rather than nuclear power plants) made it unstoppable.

Yucca Mt., on the other hand, was a political hot potato from the start:
https://www.macalester.edu/academics/environmentalstudies/students/projects/citizenscience2010/yuccamountain/background.html

 

[tstarling]

We will not be able to keep up with population growth- especially if we keep wasting all those resources by letting organic waste co-mingle with electronics. If we could become more efficient, less wasteful, and re-learn how to fix stuff rather than buying everything new we might have a fighting chance. And as conservation starts to make sense, we might even use less than we generate.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Pumped hydro does have some attractive qualities. Relatively efficient round-trip, should have a long life and low maintenance.

But... there just aren't many places that can support a good sized pump-storage facility. You need a place to put a lake nearby at a higher altitude. Gravity is a weak force, it takes a lot of mass * height to store much power. In some places, evaporation is an issue.

Yes. I googled one particular pumped hydro plant and took note of the elevation difference between reservoirs. It was 500 meters (or 1640 feet, or 1/3 mile). Not like you could build water towers to use that kind of storage anywhere. Requires very special pre-existing natural conditions.

Which brings me to the question of why power plants have to store off hour production. It's because they can never shut off the steam heating systems, right? It takes too long to get them going again.

 

[mfb]

The criteria for nuclear waste storage is that you have to guarantee it isn't going to leak for some unbelievably long period of time, that it's not going to kill people now or ever.

Isn't this a double standard? We have deaths from all other types of power sources constantly, but nuclear has to show there is absolutely no way it could ever harm anyone?
A very low risk is not sufficient?Coal power plants kill 1-2 million people per year. That is a big city every year.
Meanwhile nuclear power has to investigate the remote possibility that a few people in 1000 years get slightly higher cancer risks.

 

[russ_watters]

Isn't this a double standard? We have deaths from all other types of power sources constantly, but nuclear has to show there is absolutely no way it could ever harm anyone?
A very low risk is not sufficient?Coal power plants kill 1-2 million people per year. That is a big city every year.
Meanwhile nuclear power has to investigate the remote possibility that a few people in 1000 years get slightly higher cancer risks.

I'll put a finer point on it: @zoobyshoe is factually correct that the criteria for storage in the USA is for extremely long term extreme safety. There are two different standards, one for 10,000 years and one less stringent for 1,000,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#EPA.27s_rule

That's the criteria, yes, but is that reasonable? As we agree: no, it is not reasonable. I'd go further to say that it appears to me that the safety standards are being advocated specifically for the purpose of sabbotaging nuclear power.

So again, I ask people to consider: what is it that you really want? Do you want a massive amount of clean energy right now (er -- within 10-20 years), or not?

 

[OmCheeto]

Yes. The bill actually says 85kWh.

That is just wild. Both my San Diego sister and I use a minimum of 285±5 e-kwh per month.

I just got back from the coast a couple of days ago, and had shut off all non-essentials in the house before I left. Upon returning I tried to figure out why your e-bill was so low. So I plugged my 20 gallon fish tank's power drains into my Kill-A-Watt meter, and discovered that it consumes more than half of your monthly energy: 46 kwh!
I am never again investing in guppies...

I'm guessing the rest of my excess is due to a myriad of minor electrical things that I just leave on, as they can't possibly use that much energy. But mostly, I'm guessing it's my water heater. My entire house is electric. Makes the maths easier.

My energy use is split between electricity and gas. The stove/oven, space heat, and water heater are all gas. Everything else: electricity. My bill as a whole more than doubles in winter months because they charge more for both gas and electricity during the winter and, in the winter, I use much more gas to heat. The 85kWh electricity bill is a 'sweet spot' kind of month, when the rates are low and the weather isn't hot enough to go into full cooling mode.

That's basically my sister's situation.

I'm getting the impression from this thread some people in some parts of the country are charged by time of day, but I'm not sure. Here we are not: a kWh costs the same no matter what time of the day you use it, EXCEPT in the case of people with electric cars. If you recharge from midnight to 6 A.M. they charge less than half the daytime costs. That's a special program you have to sign up for.

But, it looks like that's changing, and they are shifting to charging by time of day. At this point, it's voluntary: you can sign up for time of day rates if you think you'll save money that way.
https://www.sdge.com/whenergy/residential.php

I do not know how that will affect my bill, but I'm thinking not so much, being a night owl.

I'm getting the impression that people don't understand that you live in an ideal solar environment.
I just learned the other day that:

San Diego Ranks No. 1 Nationally in Solar Panel Installations: Report
Published at 2:20 PM PDT on Apr 4, 2017

A year ago, San Diego has 189 megawatts of installed solar capacity, enough to power 47,000 homes.

Now, the City has 303 megawatts of capacity, researchers have found. That means San Diego's solar capacity could power the equivalent of approximately 76,000 homes. ​

...
In trying to determine if this was a good idea for my sister, I did some minor calculations, analyzing daylight hours and cloud cover for both her and me.
For some reason, I picked a 900 watt system. It's a tad small for her, but appears to generate twice as much energy than you use. (In that sweet spot month of course).

I removed 2 hours of daylight, as sunrise and sunset are probably worthless. But even then the above graph is probably overly optimistic.

But the most entertaining number of all, was my December 2016 electric bill. If I were charged at the SDG&E rates and had never doubled the insulation in my house back in the early 90's, my electric bill would have been ≈$1700. That's nearly twice what 900 watts worth of solar panels cost.
Fortunately, our rates are quite a bit lower, so my bill was only about $300.

Yes. I googled one particular pumped hydro plant and took note of the elevation difference between reservoirs. It was 500 meters (or 1640 feet, or 1/3 mile). Not like you could build water towers to use that kind of storage anywhere. Requires very special pre-existing natural conditions.

I've a 300 foot tall hill near my house, with a 50,000,000 gallon reservoir on top. From my calculations, it could supply a weeks worth of Zooby-trons to 2400 homes. (20 kwh)

According to google and wiki, you have two prominences, one inside the city limits, and one inside the county, that could do something similar:

Cowles Mountain with a 500,000,000 gallon reservoir could backup 79,000 homes for a week.
Cuyamaca Peak could backup 216,000 homes.​

I've heard they lop off the tops of mountains, out in the east, to harvest coal, for a one time shot at energy. It seems reasonable to me to do it, for a millennia's worth of storage. Maybe they could double as water parks.

Which brings me to the question of why power plants have to store off hour production. It's because they can never shut off the steam heating systems, right? It takes too long to get them going again.

I've only operated a mini-me power plant, so I can't answer this.

ps. I have scores of other graphs, if anyone is interested.
Here's one example:

"total kwh" for San Marcos involved converting natural gas "therms" to "kwh", and adding them to my sisters e-kwh.
For those of you not familiar with the San Diego area, San Marcos is a suburb.

 

[mheslep]

...Sorry to wave my hand at it, but there is some sort of blockage here in the US that has prevented it from getting done here...

Certainly. An entirely political block, which can be unblocked. Query: if some kind of energy system was being blocked (or continued) by political pressure from fossile fuel interests, e.g. the oil industry, is sorry-its-blocked an acceptable argument?

You and others excuse Fukushima as a freak, but freaks happen,

Yes accidents happen. So? A brand new gas power plant exploded up in Connecticut a couple years ago, killing some people. Tragic. The F. quake and tsunami killed over ten thousand. Very tragic. The F. radiation killed nobody, and never will to a point that's measurable. The possibility of such an accident should be low, but it need not need be down to the odds of the sun exploding.

and the longer the time you have to go depending on the absence of a freak, the less you can say the freak accident won't happen to some storage site somewhere.

Dry cask storage sites and underground storage are not part of live 3GW reactors that might have high pressure steam or hydrogen explosions, spreading material. Imagine the worst for stored idle waste, and the worst outcome is some kind of local cleanup that's been done many times with chemical spills and radioactive materials.

I brought up San Onofre. Despite you and Russ especially often claiming that the nuclear industry has learned its lessons and safety is now unparalleled, they, never-the-less installed some defective steam pipes. There was no accident, thank God, but they had to shut the plant down

Unfortunately for SONGS most of the pipes were defective, meaning the plant would slowly lose its ability to produce power if it kept operating without action. However, the steam generator is ...a steam generator contraining breifly radioactive water; it is not the reactor core containing fissile material and fission products. NRC:

Before the NRC allows a PWR to operate, the plant owner must show the plant can keep the public safe even if a very unlikely tube rupture happens. The plant must show radiation doses beyond the plant's fence would stay below the NRC's conservative limits (described in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 100). Plant operators must also have emergency procedures for safely dealing with steam generator tube ruptures and leaks

A one-of-a-kind site in that the public opposition didn't end up killing it, or maybe the fact it was essentially a military disposal site (waste from nuclear weapons rather than nuclear power plants) made it unstoppable

.
How many does one need? A football field or two can store the waste stream from the nuclear fleet for hundreds of years. It's the same US government in charge of either military waste or commercial power waste. New Mexico volunteered.

 

[russ_watters]

Russ told me (different time, different thread) that we had about 50 years of known or 'reasonably assumed to exist' nuclear fuel left at current rates of usage and current means of usage. "Means of usage," is the important concept here because If, but only if, all nuclear plants converted to breeder reactors, that figure could be extended by a fantastic 100x. 5000 years.

[Note: previous post of mine deleted due to finding the reference]
You're referring to this post/thread from 5 years ago and doing so very badly:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/best-way-to-produce-electricity.822014/page-6#post-5164813

It is tough to be sure because you are so far off, but taking the number and the claim separately:
1. At the current consumption rate, with current methods of usage and with currently known resources, we have 230 years of nuclear fuel left. If we assume that if we look more we'll find more and that we take small, technologically easy steps of enriching and reprocessing, that goes up to 900 years.

2. "50 years" is close to the 56 years stated in my post. But that 56 years was how long nuclear could replace all of the other energy sources (not just electricity) under the same very conservative assumptions.

Also, as you note, this does not include uranium breeder reactors, but it also does not include throrium breeder reactors, which IIRC could provide 4x as much, using technology known today. So suffice to say that with currently known technology and reasonable assumptions about fuel supplies, nuclear power could fuel all of the worlds energy needs for thousands of years at current levels of consumption.

So please stop citing that prediction at all, much less attributing it to me!

 

[russ_watters]

I realize I'm going backwards, but it appears this didn't get taken care of.

Point by point you seem to understand what I'm saying, so I can't understand why you don't see the benefit.

I can't understand why you think $4.42 is a larger number than $40! This is so obviously a case of buying something for more money than you can re-sell it for that I'm having a little trouble believing you are serious about it. Perhaps coming back after the weekend and having another look will make it click for you. What you are assuming is that you can make hydrogen with electricity for cheaper than you can buy electricity made with hydrogen. And conservation of energy and money says you can't...that is, unless you can sell hydrogen to a sucker who loses a ton of money making electricity to sell back to you. It's like thinking when you and a friend each give the other a $100 Christmas present that you both turned a profit!

Russ, you didn't respond to my response to this. You see now that your reasoning here is incorrect, right? The solar storage is to extend use into times when the sun is not usable but the electricity demand is still high and the cost still high.

Well, no: you're wrong there too(twice!), but I let it go to focus on the more important wrong discussed above. If you look again at my scenario, I assume a constant price per kWh, incorporating your assumption even though it is a bad one. And why is it bad? Because even if it is true that one peaking plant can do it, you aren't just after solar power to replace peaks, you want it to replace base load (coal and nuclear). So it does have to provide power at night.

 

[russ_watters]

In my local town the traffic lights and similar have been updated to mostly utilize solar power when available.
Seems like a forward step.

Solar power is quite viable for small electric demands that are relatively far from power infrastructure. As a retrofit it doesn't make sense, but new highway signs, for example, can be provided power cheaper with a local solar panel and batteries than running thousands of feet of power lines to it. Even automatic faucets can use "solar" power viably.

 

[russ_watters]

Certainly. An entirely political block, which can be unblocked. Query: if some kind of energy system was being blocked (or continued) by political pressure from fossil fuel interests, e.g. the oil industry, is sorry-its-blocked an acceptable argument?

Rhetorical, I know, but I'd be willing to bet most people here could name several conspiracy theories about fossil fuel industries and their political power. But on the flip side, we have had true and totally open conspiracies to sabotage nuclear power. Most recent was the Reid-Obama conspiracy to sabotage the Yucca Mountain repository. It was overturned in court, but it still cost us all money and did damage to the nuclear industry.